Pragmatic Consulting from the Client's Perspective
In my career I have been fortunate enough to work for two of the
best companies on earth: Accenture and Microsoft. In my eleven
years at Accenture I got a tremendous education on systems
development, project management, strategic planning, and client
service. In my nine years at Microsoft, I took most of what I
learned at Accenture and learned how to apply it in a very
practical and effective manner. Both experiences were key to my
growth as a professional.
When I left Accenture to go to Microsoft, I found myself moving
from the consultant's side of the desk to the client's side of
the desk. At Microsoft I had the opportunity to work with a
large number of consulting firms in my various jobs managing IT
projects, heading up Corporate Procurement, and managing
Corporate Planning & Budgeting. In working with many of these
firms, I had ample opportunity to reflect on my own career as a
consultant and think about how much better a consultant I would
have been had I viewed things more from the client's
perspective. It is this client-based, or pragmatic consulting
that dramatically increases a consultant's effectiveness and
builds long-term win-win relationships with clients.
The "Ah-ha's"
In moving from the consultant to the client role, I was able to
clearly articulate some principles, or "Ah-has," that many
consultants either don't understand or don't practice on a
regular basis, as follows:
Consulting is more about listening than speaking - Being an
active listener and asking a lot of questions of the client is
crucial to getting a deep understanding of the client's issues
and hot buttons. Too frequently I've seen consultants rush in
with their perspectives on theories or problems without truly
taking the time to listen to what is important to the client.
Sometimes things worked out OK, but there were times where the
consultant's perceived understanding of the problem didn't
represent the client's true problems. The end result was is a
ticked-off client who viewed the consultant as a pompous jerk.
A consultant needs to resist the urge to present solutions
before the client has a chance to fully explain the problems. It
could be that the consultant understands the problem very well,
but to develop a connection with the client, you need to let the
client articulate their issues and concerns. That connect time
with the client is important to building the trust and
credibility that both the consultant and client need to work
effectively together.
True credibility is achieved fastest by demonstrating a
thoughtful understanding of the client's problem - A consultant
may have a strong understanding of industry or functional issues
that other companies face, but that doesn't mean that those
problems apply to the client. When a consultant assumes that
problems other companies face apply at the client, they take a
definite risk in establishing credibility with the client. Even
worse is when the client explains their problem and the
consultant either doesn't acknowledge the problem or doesn't get
it after repeated explanations. The longer it takes for a
consultant to grasp the client's problems, the shakier their
credibility becomes.
A consultant needs to put themselves in the client's shoes,
understand the client's problem from their perspective, and not
make generation assumptions about the complexity or urgency of
the problem. Show an "I feel your pain" perspective of the
client's problem and you'll quickly get over the credibility
hump and get the client to where they want to listen to you.
"Concise" is more important than "more" - I personally fell
victim to this as a younger consultant. Many of my presentations
were measured in part by how many slides and how much
information I could cram into a presentation. It was commonplace
for me to create 100+ slide PowerPoint presentations which would
take several hours to go through. When I joined Microsoft, I was
thoroughly thrashed the first time I created a
pass-the-weight-test presentation. I learned quickly to focus on
concise, tight, treat-every-word-like-you're-spending-a-dollar
presentations.
A consultant needs to shelve the urge to cram as many pretty
slides into a presentation as they can. The client doesn't
necessarily need to see all of the gory details. I've learned to
focus many of my presentations into a core deck and an appendix.
The core deck focuses on three core components: a concise
articulation of the problem, the proposed solution to the
problem, and how the solution will be implemented. The appendix
contains other supporting pieces of information that the
consultant only reviews with the client if necessary. I've been
able to get my point across to my client in a very crisp,
concise manner and was able to deep-dive on questions as
necessary. True, you may only need a small portion of your
appendix and much of your hard work may never see the light of
day, but if you're solving the client's problem, who cares?
The client generally knows the theory, what they may not know is
how to practically apply it - I've been through one-too-many
presentations as a client where a consulting firm brings in
their industry expert to talk about the problems that face my
industry. After they go on for about fifteen minutes telling me
theory I already know, I would ask, "So how did you fix it?"
More often than not, the industry expert only knew vague details
about how someone else dealt with the problem, if the problem
was dealt with at all. Knowing the theory only gets you through
the first mile in a 26-mile marathon; knowing how to apply the
theory in a very practical and effective manner gets you through
the rest of the race.
Clients want to hear about how their problems can be solved in a
practical, straightforward, effective manner, not about lofty
theory. If your theories don't solve problems, save them for
late-night philosophical discussions over a favorite beverage.
Relationships are more important than short-term fee goals -
True, consultants are in business to generate fees and make
money. There's nothing wrong with a profit motive and a goal to
make money. Where it does become a problem, though, is when
short-term fee goals cause a consultant to do something that is
not in the client's best interest. Those consultants that seemed
to always have one hand in my pocket weren't the consultants
that survived in the long term.
The consultants I respected the most are those who told me
things like "I really don't think you need me on this," or "You
could probably do this yourself and save some money." When a
consultant puts my best business interests over their own fees,
my trust in them goes up exponentially. True, the consultant may
have a short-term fee hit because they didn't sell a job, but
the long-term potential for win-win between the client and
consultant was more attainable and far more lucrative.
Saying "I don't know" is OK at times - Being a consultant
doesn't mean that the omniscience fairy came to you one night,
waved her magic wand, and deemed you the all-knowledgeable one.
Sometimes issues will come up that the consultant can't answer.
Some of the ugliest situations I've seen were when the
consultant tried to fake his way through a topic he had no
business addressing. A simple "I don't know" would have been far
better than throwing up a smoke screen and hoping no one asks
questions.
Having said this, there are two caveats to note: first, whenever
a consultant says "I don't know" they need to follow it up with
"but I'll find out and give you an answer by x date." Second, a
consultant only gets a few "I don't knows" before they're
labeled as an incompetent doofus who doesn't know their subject
matter. Having a strong understanding of the subject matter the
consultant professes to be expert in is mandatory; having a
shaky understanding will get you voted off the island in the
first round.
True effectiveness as a consultant means the consultant listens
to the client, understands their pain, presents practical
solutions in a concise manner, and demonstrates the utmost in
honesty and integrity. Keep these things in focus, and you'll
earn and keep the best clients. You will establish yourself as a
pragmatic consultant who sees things from the only perspective
that matters -- that of the client.